Influencer on AfD success: “That was the best election campaign since the NSDAP”

taz: Mr. Rensing, in your book “Make Nazis Afraid Again” you emphasize how important emotions are in politics. What feelings did you have when you found out the election results from Saxony-Anhalt?

Daniel Rensing: First of all, none at all, I didn't feel anything. You can't be surprised. Nothing has changed - except that we now have it in writing. It makes me a little happy that the Greens and SPD are in the state parliament. I'm a little sad that the BSW also made it and the left lost percentages.

Daniel Rensing is a political influencer with more than 230,000 followers on TikTok (its.daniel.brln). Now he has written a book that has jumped straight onto the "Spiegel" bestseller list: "Make Nazis afraid again: How to take down rights on the Internet with humor and facts and defend democracy at the same time", Heyne Verlag, 256 pages, 18 euros. The premiere reading with the author will take place on Thursday, September 10, 2026, at 8 p.m. in Berlin.

taz: How do you explain the success of the right-wing extremists?

Rensing: On the one hand, with the developments of the last 35 years in the East! We can thank the CDU for that. Since the fall of communism, she has said that everything would be better now and promised “blooming landscapes”. To be honest, I don't see that, but rather a structurally weak region. And if the sentence “everything used to be better” is true for people, we shouldn’t be surprised that they no longer have trust in politics.

Rensing: In terms of craftsmanship, it was the best election campaign that has taken place since the NSDAP. So in terms of election campaign. Ulrich Siegmund grinned and took selfies at three “family celebrations” every day. The AfD has spent endless amounts of money organizing these “family celebrations”. The big trick was that Siegmund - no matter where he performed - always said: Today is a family celebration, we don't talk about politics. In the end, people chose a lifestyle, not politics.

taz: How important was your social media strategy for the AfD's electoral success?

Rensing: An incredibly high one! There were at least four or five streamers broadcasting each of these events live online, every day. There were 60 new videos of these performances every day on YouTube alone. The internet was flooded. Nobody could avoid it anymore.

taz: Are the algorithms programmed in such a way that they actively favor right-wing content? Or are they just spreading more widely because they trigger stronger emotions that the algorithm rewards?

Rensing: The latter. As much as I distrust Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and the Chinese government at Tiktok, I don't believe they are actively pushing right-wing content. I just think that left-wing content is boring as hell.

taz: Why aren't many leftists funny?

Rensing: (Laughs) Humor is a risk. No matter what a leftist says, there is always a left-wing tribunal or the inner ethics committee around the next corner that can make a joke out of you. Humor also requires self-irony. This in turn requires the willingness to acknowledge that you yourself are wrong.

taz: The AfD gets by without any self-irony. Still, she manages to make people laugh.

Rensing: Exactly, the AfD people have no sense of humor. They're just making jokes at other people's expense. I just have to laugh at this group of rubble because they are embarrassing and ridiculous. This is often real satire.

taz: When was the last time you were annoyed that you had to laugh?

Rensing: Whenever I have to laugh at gags that I shouldn't laugh at as a leftist - for example concentration camp jokes or something like that. I'm already ashamed.

taz: Laughing at jokes like this can also be a survival strategy. For example, in the comedy film “Train of Life,” in which Jews fake their own deportation, which is macabre and incredibly funny.

Rensing: Exactly! Attention, now my inner Ulf Poschardt comes out for a moment: If I were to talk to him about political correctness, we probably wouldn't be that far apart. I also think that the moral pointing finger from the left over the last 20 years has led to exactly where we are today. You can't tell people what they can and can't say. And we haven’t done ourselves any favors with left-wing cancel culture.

taz: How much do you think this played a role in the election outcome in Saxony-Anhalt?

Rensing: If it hadn't been for all this left-wing wokeness, the AfD would be at 15 percent nationwide today.

taz: You advise Democrats to be louder on social media. So we should fight the right with their own weapons?

Rensing: Yes! This is called populism. I am a “left-wing populist”. For me, accessibility is not a betrayal of the cause.

taz: Consciously creating feelings in people - isn't that manipulation? And getting them to behave in a certain way is now known as “social engineering.”

Rensing: The question assumes that there is emotion-free communication. But even the “Tagesschau” communicates with feelings: with pure boredom. What I do is rhetoric. It's been called that since Aristotle. And no one would ever have accused that of “social engineering”. Yes, I try to make people laugh in order to draw attention to facts. Studies show that people who have laughed briefly are less likely to be on guard. The brain signals: There is no threat here. In this state we accept new things more easily.

taz: The AfD's largest group of voters are men. How well does it actually work to provoke feelings? The patriarchy prohibits them from having most of their feelings or trains them out of them.

Rensing: An emotion that is considered very masculine is anger. The AfD manages this industrially. But there is a second emotion that men caught in this image of masculinity are allowed to show: that is laughter. This is my level. I don't use Rage Bait, there's enough of it, that's true.

taz: According to studies, social media often leads to depression or eating disorders - for example in young girls who hang out on Instagram for too long, right-wing content can also get you down. Shouldn't we stay away from it?

Rensing: These studies are all correct. But it sounds like: “Why should we go to the battlefield, there’s going to be shooting?” But the battlefield won't disappear if we don't go there. You can see that in the development of X, where the SPD, the Greens and the Left have said goodbye. This is, excuse me if I say it like that: stupid. Because you then leave the entire network to one political direction, in which they can then hype each other up - without experiencing any counter-talk.

taz: The question is where do you draw the line? If Hitler's “Mein Kampf” had been an anthology, would you have also contributed an article?

Rensing: If I could have criticized everything else in it, I would have done so. For example, I really liked how Florian Schröder sat down and Julian Reichelt objected.

taz: Formats in which people talk to rights are very successful. But experts warn that the right-wing always benefits in the end - no matter how good the counterarguments are.

Rensing: Yes, but that's exactly what it means with the firewall. It only helps the AfD. How often I hear, “that only helps the AfD”.

taz: What doesn't the AfD help? Maybe we as anti-fascists have to realize that none of us really know what helps against the AfD.

Rensing: Yes. But that doesn't mean we should stop fighting back. Should we all meet every Wednesday in a closed Marx reading group and do nothing else?

taz: A little more reading might not hurt some leftists.

Rensing: Yes, but I don't think Marx is of any help to us in this situation. But maybe my book (laughs)!